In An Absolute World, Earth Wouldn't Need Help From Absolute.

Please, this Earth Day, be kind to the planet, and please, when viewing this short, be kind. SNL's Michaela Watkins plays a low budget Mother Nature in the fight between man and, um, nature.

Because Advertising Has Lots of Great Jobs.

No, it does. Says so right here: "This is going to be a great event with tons of job opportunities for advertising professionals." PR optimism aside, there's going to be a Diversity in Advertising Career Day in NYC this Wednesday, April 22nd. More details here, but scheduled agencies showing up at this free event are: Arnold Worldwide, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, BBDO New York, Energy BBDO (Chicago), Cablevision, Carol H. Williams Advertising, Draftfcb, Draftfcb Healthcare, Edelman, G2 (G2 Branding & Design, G2 Direct & Digital, G2 Interactive, G2 Promotional Marketing), GLOBALHUE, Grey New York, GroupM (MAXUS, MediaCom, mediaedge:cia, Mindshare), Initiative, JWT, MARC USA, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, McGarry Bowen, MPG, Starcom MediaVest, Team Detroit and Wieden + Kennedy.
Hopefully diversity includes rabbits too. Just sayin.

(Image.)

Smart Marketers Advertise During A Recession. You Should Too

You know that tired old mantra as to why it's smart to advertise during a recession? Ever wonder why it's regurgitated ad naseum every time the economy tanks? Because it's true! Yes, advertising during a recession is the right thing to and there's research top back that up.

A McGraw-Hill study of 600 businesses found businesses that maintained or increased their ad spend saw higher sales growth during a recession and in the years following. In fact, the study found those who maintained or increased their ad budgets experienced a 256 percent increase in sales compared to those who cut their budgets.

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Never Let A Good Idea End Up on the Floor

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. It's almost time, people. Almost time for you to get a glimpse of the first Killed Ideas. In a couple of days, we'll begin sharing with you some of the better submissions we've received. We'll offer up some initial commentary which, hopefully, will motivate you to submit your own Killed Idea.

Some time ago, I was in a presentation and my creative director was unveiling a new campaign to a client high atop One Penn Plaza in New York. The meeting with this client was, as always, jovial and upbeat. Until one particular piece of creative was presented. There was something about it he client didn't quite like.

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Killed Ideas to Give Your Creative Masterpiece New Life

OK so you've landed the perfect client for whom you've been jonesing for years. They're about to launch a new product line and have a huge marketing budget to support the launch. (OK, just pretend the economy doesn't suck and they actually do have huge marketing budget.)

You concept the most amazing idea you've ever concepted and present it to them. During the presentation they praise it. They love it. They fawn all over it. They pontificate about how it will introduce a sea change within their industry and how it will skyrocket the company to greatness. Everyone fist bumps each other at the end of the meeting and the client promise to call with final approval the next morning.

Then...

The call comes...

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Adrants Introduces the Adrants Creative Archive

WTF? Please! Not another creative archive! Yes, sadly, we are going to subject you to another. But wait! Don't go just yet. This one is from us, your favorite ad site in the entire world, Adrants. Isn't that awesome? Now you can get everything from us; your ad news on Adrants, your social networking needs on AdGabber and, now, your obsessive need to peruse other people's creative with the Adrants Creative Archive.

And guess what? It's free! OK, well that's sort of a lie. Let us clarify. As new creative is added, it's free for a couple of weeks before it goes behind a subscription wall. So why would you want to pay for a creative archive when so much of it is out there for free? Seriously? Oh come on, you know why. Admit it. You're lazy! You don't actually want to troll through YouTube or Flickr to find what you want. That's like trying to find a creative director that doesn't wear black.

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TNT's 'Trust Me' Gives AdGabber Some Lesbian Love

On this week's episode of Trust Me, Adrants' sister site, AdGabber was mentioned in a plot line involving the Sarah Krajicek-Hunter (Monica Potter) character. Apparently, she was labeled a lesbian role model for women in advertising by someone on AdGabber. Of course, she wasn't (on the actual site) and she's not so for the rest of her subplot during the episode, she did all she could to convince everyone otherwise.

While we're very, very, very (did we say very?) pleased to have been mentioned on the show (thank you Hunt and John), we would loved to have worked the plot into the site with a "real" profile. We could have had a lot of fun with it. So, Hunt and John, we're happy to entertain any ideas you might have.

How about a Rothman Greene & Mohr group on the site? Hey, Mad Men did the whole pseudo-character thing on Twitter. Why don't you guys do it with Adgabber?

Our Apologies

On January 15, Adrants posted a depiction of the downed US Airways plane as a Virgin America ad. Certain topics are fodder for humor. This is not one of them. Our endorsement and depiction of the downed US Airways plane as a Virgin America ad was inappropriate. The posting was in poor taste, we were remiss in drawing further attention to it and corroborating it without checking our facts. As a result, we want to offer our apologies to the crew, passengers, families of US Air Flight1549 for making light of this accident. It is clear that Virgin America had nothing to do with the original false ad and that they and the entire airline industry takes issues of safety very seriously.

AdGabber Grows to 6,500 With No End in Sight

Since I couldn't have said it better myself, I'll just give you a taste and link to the rest. As many of you may know, Adrants has a sister site called Adgabber. It's a social network of sorts and it's where we house all the ads we feature here on Adrants. It's a thriving community of 6,500 members who discuss things in forums, post pictures, add videos, write blog posts and do everything else you could imagine a social network allows for.

Ning, the company that powers AdGabber, recently highlighted AdGabber on its blog and wrote, "Members have started discussions about the highlights of working in advertising, debated whether Ugly Sweater parties are simply marketing ploys and posted videos about corporate marketing strategies. Members can discover creepy ads, guidelines for radio advertising and even a warm and silly welcome for a new member."

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Adrants Shuts Down, Makes the Logo Bigger

This week, Angela and I will dive headfirst into that massive online marketing conference known as ad:tech. We will be having so much fun...uh...working so hard, we won't be able to properly provide you with the editorial goodness you've come to know and love. So, we're shutting down for a week. Turning things off. In place of our editorial goodness, we'll probably post an image of Donny Deutsch in his Speedo or a giant Enfatico logo on the homepage just to remind you of the oddities the advertising business is so apt at serving up.

Oh come on. Seriously! That'd be like Advertising Age announcing they'd go dark because Bob Garfield threw a temper tantrum and sent everyone home for the week. Of course we're going to publish. Every day. Like we always do. There will just be less Angela and Steve and more Make the Logo Bigger's Bill Green, who will be guest writing for the week. If you've read Bill, you know he's got the same disdainful love for the business as we do and he'll be twisting the knife into advertising's under belly all week long.

Please welcome Bill. We're excited to have him. You'll see Angela and me from time to time throughout the week, bringing you updates from ad:tech, as well as a few things I'm sure each of us won't be able to leave alone.